


Causalities

by tazwrites



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:07:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25770319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tazwrites/pseuds/tazwrites
Summary: These numbers mean nothing to you.You are an American. 9/11 was a horror we remember every year. We stare at the flag and watch, dread building in our hearts, as the scene of the airplane crashes into the building, commotion replaying. The flames lick up the screen and you think of the videos you watch at home, children crying, legs burnt, huddled in alleyways, but the class around you is staring in disgust.
Kudos: 4





	Causalities

300,000 homeless in Beirut. Over 1,000 deaths. 900,000 people flooding the streets of Jordan, seeking refuge from war torn Libya, ravaged by hunger, disease, poverty. Scratching at the floor for scraps. Looking for shelter. 6.2 million individuals, with thoughts and feelings and emotions, displaced in Syria, no where to stay, no place to go back home to.

These numbers mean nothing to you.

You are an American. 9/11 was a horror we remember every year. We stare at the flag and watch, dread building in our hearts, as the scene of the airplane crashes into the building, commotion replaying, scene etched into your retinas. The flames lick up the screen and you think of the videos you watch at home, the ones where children cry, legs burnt, huddled in alleyways. The class around you is watches the screen in disgust. This is your fault, you hear. You know. Your parents should have never been born. These are people from _your_ country.

You don’t know these men on the screen. Osama bin Laden does not burn into your brain the way George Bush did with his insincere smile, large waves, a powerful, packed, white man. You’ve never been comfortable with men. Men like that spell bad for your family. They have always wanted to hurt you. “Little girl,” they sneer at you in shops, and you clutch your mother’s hand tighter. She pulls you closer to her legs so you can hide from their gaze.

“Osama bin Laden?” you ask, when classmates cheer of his death. “Who is that?”

The only thing you know is that he drowned. Later, you find pictures of him, wearing a thobe and looking kind. You would hold his hand, maybe, in another world. And then he starts speaking a language not yours, muttering words of hate you have never heard about, and the only thing you do is cry.

“He’s not mine,” you sob in class, but your classmates jeer. They think you vie for pity, attention, a sob story as insincere as their president’s smiles. You want a place to belong. You want to belong _here_ , in a country that speaks the same language as you, that smiles as much as you do, that watches the same shows. You return home and talk to cousins on the phone and cannot understand what they say, and the conversation dies after two minutes, nothing left to say to the stranger on the other side of the world.

Millions of miles away. “That is your family,” your parents comfort you. “That is your home.”

But you know your home is here, planted underneath your feet, in a country that has never wanted you. You run around on its pavement and smile and the cars honk at you and strangers throw beer bottles at your mother. Your family tries to return home but America has stolen from their country, and your sister has cancer and she cannot find treatment in a country not her own. She comes here and warms a bed in a hospital that accepts her and gives her love and care, and you think she is lucky. She belongs here, and to us, to another family. The boy beside her stares at the window wistfully as my mother dutifully returns day after day, bringing toys for her.

This the story of my family in America. For me, it was a matter of belonging. For others, it is a matter of staying alive.

But you cannot understand, can you? You are _American._ Born and bred in a country lauded superior, accepted by your classmates. Not a day has gone by where you worry of water. Instead, you stare at a television screen years later, on the anniversary of 9/11, and tell me that this is the most horrible event that has happened in the world.

And I smile because I, too, am lucky enough to not have died on a boat from Syria to Greece. The bloated body of a 4 year old comes into conscious, but never has the lasting impact of 9/11.

Casualties.

You could never understand such a big number.


End file.
